Garden Design Essentials: Creating Emphasis and Focal Points

When viewing a beautiful room, where does your eye rest? Usually on something special that commands attention—artwork above a fireplace, a dramatic floral arrangement. Placing a strong visual element for impact is a classic designer's trick, using the principle of emphasis to give focus to an otherwise ordinary setting.

Emphasis is often interchangeable with point of view, highlighted by Marjorie Elliott Bevlin in Design Through Discovery. The good news: design principles are universal and timeless. We can draw inspiration and employ them in our own environments.

Bevlin explains five devices for dramatic emphasis: light, direction, height, position, and color—each usable alone or in tandem.

Take a tour through these landscapes to discover how emphasis and point of view enliven outdoor rooms.

Create an Object of Desire

An arbor in the distance shelters a garden bench but also frames a classical sundial at the cross section of two intersecting pathways, transforming an unnoticed corner into a charming focal point.

Give Prominence to an Ordinary Object

Note where your gaze rests. Emphasize that perspective by displaying an urn, planted vessel, or small sculpture on a garden table or pedestal. A table with an elegant base gives this garden niche a heightened feeling.

Go Diagonal

Enhance diagonal sight lines with pathways and plantings at a 45-degree angle to the house. This extends views through the garden while giving the illusion of a larger landscape. A diagonal stepping stone pathway has its own special point of view: a beautifully placed contemporary planter, its half-sphere bowl mirroring mounded plant forms.

Use Light and Reflections

Architectural lines are appealing, but after dark, interior and exterior lighting turn this home into a glowing beacon. Light creates dramatic contrast—thus emphasis. Reflected light adds mystery.

Play with Light

Spotlighting and uplighting add glowing washes along a tree trunk and sculpture face. Garden lighting creates a magical effect, giving the garden a point of view after dark—achievable with just one or two fixtures.

Highlight Mother Nature

Plant an eye-catching island on the sunrise/sunset side of your home to exploit horizontal rays backlighting branches, foliage, and ornamentation. This island focal point integrates large-scale urns with a specimen tree, shrubs, and ground covers—almost as dramatic as distant snow-capped mountains.

Use Color for Emphasis

The color, form, and placement of art elevate it to prominence in this hip rooftop garden. Glossy orange steel forms in "Tempest" connect with the Golden Gate Bridge. Whimsical interplay with orange-blooming kangaroo paw plants against white structure—brilliant in more ways than one.

Balance the Scene

Frame a view with symmetrical plantings—clipped hedges or flowering crab apples in four quadrants around a central element. An updated approach to the traditional garden maze: perfectly symmetrical, but a blue-glazed urn downplays stuffy formality.

Create a Portrait

Architecture, horticulture, and art turn a prosaic fence section into an intriguing landscape moment. An Asian stone lantern creates emphasis and point of view; every element draws the eye there—from vivid red Japanese maple canopy to stepping-stone path.

A Room with a View

Natural to want a point of view through a window or door, but this home is so integrated with the landscape it's hard to tell where garden ends and interior begins. The multitrunk tree is the focal point; open-air architecture perfectly sited to exploit the vista.

Journey's End

A path leads through a stand of trees with dappled light, continuing toward a distant sunny spot. Strong lines are emphasized; a low L-shaped bench becomes the natural focal point.